


there's a lesson in there somewhere, something nothing special

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [105]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10048043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: He's finally found where he left the swimming pool.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for kibblesnbutts, who requested whouffaldi fluff involving swimming

_Come quick_ , the Doctor yelled.

Clara pulled her mobile away from her ear and winced. “Is everything alright?”

_Just come. Follow your GPS, I’ve done a clever thing to it. Chop chop._

The TARDIS obligingly parted its walls for her, laying down corridors as she jogged deeper into it, following the blinking path on her mobile’s map application.

Two minutes and a few bursts of feedback from the speakers later, she skidded to a stop in front of a plain grey door, the placard reading ‘POOL’. She braced herself and pushed the door open.

It was a swimming pool. She wasn’t entirely sure what she’d expected. She stepped gingerly out onto the wet tile as the ship sealed herself back up.

There was something moving in the water. She panicked, briefly, before the darting, almost preternaturally graceful creature popped up, coughed, splashed around, and swept the hair plastered to their skull into a spiky mess.

“I thought it was an emergency,” she said. “Remember what we talked about? Different sorts of important and how to communicate which one of them it is?”

“Yeah, sorry.” The Doctor tread water, grinning widely. “It’s just. I’d lost this! Been missing for ages. And now it’s here. Swimsuits are in the - wherever, over there?” He didn’t bother to point.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said. She took her shoes and socks off, rolled her trouser cuffs up, and walked carefully over to the edge of the pool, sitting down and dipping her toes in experimentally. Of course there was a pool. Not enough to have a lake and at least twenty bathtubs, any good time-space ship obviously needs an entire, slightly-grimy, rec center pool.

It might have been just her imagination, but it felt like the TARDIS was winking coyly at her.

“Not gonna join?” the Doctor yelled.

She shook her head.

“Too far away to interpret facial expressions and gestures, sorry.”

“Nope!” she yelled back. She watched him slide back under the surface and sort of ooze his way towards her. Whatever bizarre thing he was doing with his body, it was oddly beautiful.

He came back up a few meters away from her. “Are you, you know.” He waved an arm expansively, splashing her and briefly sending himself under.

“Use your words.”

“Shy,” he said, rolling his eyes and gracelessly spitting out water. “Because you weren’t last night, and you were fine, I suppose, body-wise I mean, but anyway I remember all. Of that, and this would be nothing new.”

She was torn between wanting to blush and failing to connect anything at all about the previous night with the drowned rat currently bobbing around in front of her. Third option: evade the situation entirely. “It’s not that.”

“But it’s something, yeah?”

“Mmm.” Evade, stay noncommittal, eventually he’ll get bored and forget about it.

The Doctor sighed and sort of slid, like an eel, to the edge of the pool, and hauled himself out onto the tile - probably not much like an eel. Eventually he managed to get into a sitting position next to her, legs dangling in the water. He plucked gingerly at the fabric of his tragically old-timey striped swimsuit, where the legs ended halfway up his thighs, apparently rearranging his own modesty.

So much squelching. Again, she had - done things, with this man. Thing. Person. He scrubbed at his hair until it popped back into something vaguely resembling its normal poof.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He nudged her leg with his foot, possibly meaning it as a comforting gesture.

“I just don’t swim, right?” She might want to talk about it.

“Right-o.” He edged closer to her, and to her credit she didn’t flinch at his clammy moistness getting all over her dry clothing. “Scared? It’s all right if you are, large bodies of water are terrifying for a wide variety of reasons.”

She turned and glared. “I’m not _scared_. I’m just not any good at swimming. So I don’t.” She turned back, watching the ripples reflect on the wall.

“Clara. _Clara_. Look at me.”

She looked, after a measured pause. He had the most awfully earnest expression, staring directly but softly into her eyes.

“You’re not any good at most things-”

“Oh, my god.”

“-But you do them anyway and that’s one of the things I lo…uh, like. About you. So.” He gestured at the pool. “Do it anyway.”

She sighed, he shrugged. They sat in companionable silence, the splish-splash noises of the Doctor kicking his feet back and forth echoing.

“It’s just the smell,” she said abruptly. “The chlorine. Reminds me of being twelve years old and awkward and - human children can be cruel.”

“Humans don’t have a monopoly on cruelty,” he said softly. She got the sense that he was staring at her again.

“Had a swimming unit in P.E.,” she said, zoning out slightly, half-aware she was sharing a level of information she might later come to regret. “All my classmates quickly passed the test to be able to swim in the deep end. Took me months. The instructor very kindly let me know that I just wasn’t shaped right for swimming. Too short, too…I dunno.”

“They’re all probably dead by now, if that helps.” He popped his index finger in his mouth then held it up in the air. “Definitely all dead. Barring some bizarre robotic enhancements or advanced cross-temporal movement.”

That did not help in any way. He gamely tried again.

“You can float, yes?”

She nodded.

“So there you go. That’s all swimming is. If you can successfully not drown, then you’re well on your way. And it’s okay to be bad at things. I’ve never been good at much, and look at me.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to be my role model.”

“I’m not. But that’s a different argument, right. Don’t - stop changing the subject. The important thing is that I’ve finally found my pool, and I’d like for you to enjoy it with me, if you want to. Or if you’d rather go find your childhood tormentors and torment them back, we can do that instead.”

“I’m good on the tormenting, but thanks.”

He smiled, and she bit her lip to keep from smiling back, and then she kissed him. It was nice, even if he tasted like chlorine and was wet and slippery in a not-fun way.

“Pool noodles,” he said breathlessly, staring at her mouth. His eyes flicked up to hers, and then down to the ground. “Also flotation devices that look like animals. And a slip 'n’ slide, I think, though that one seems a little dangerous. And a floating bar, with margaritas, although I forgot the salt, so.”

She kissed him again, deeper this time. “I’ll take one of those floating animals,” she said, leaning back and watching the pink flush spread up and out to his ears.

He grinned, and snapped his fingers, and then she was astride a miniature elephant-shaped floatie in the middle of the pool. A small motor buzzed somewhere inside it, pushing her gently forward.

“Last one to the bar gets a margarita with no lime because I only remembered to bring two of those and I may have been here for a while,” the Doctor yelled.

Clara flipped him a V, then revved her elephant and spun around in the direction of what she hoped was the bar. She wasn’t above using all available resources to win. Besides, a margarita wasn’t even really a margarita without lime, and she’d more than earned a refreshing beverage. She tossed a wink over her shoulder, and squeezed the elephant’s ears, and zoomed headlong into the breach.


End file.
